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Re: Stressful grafting and queen rearing attempt

Cristian - Excellent stick-to-it-ivness! And how excellent of those who stuck by you and advised from experience. Fine team work, everyone.

After reading this thread, I have the one missing link for more success - move my nuc's 10 miles away and keep them closed for 3 days after planting QC's. Looking back, I have always had more success when I moved the nuc's away from the queen yard. By now, that should be automatic! It's NEVER too late to learn...

That decides it for me - there is still nectar flow time for a limited run of queens, and the bee resources have increased some. I will check total frames of brood and see if all things are go. I just got some more feeders, frames, and foundation, so will give it a go to make nucs-for-sale, if everything looks right.

MB - Thanks for the link to your old books section.

So, from now on, when making up my nuc's, the boxes will get built directly on the trailer, already bolted down in place, ready for loading up frames, going queenless over night, planting the queen cells, closing them up, and DRIVING TO THE OUTYARD, where they will stay for at least a month.

I'm definitely starting to think about making up more 6-frame, vented nucleus boxes and stocking 5 frames + a 1-frame sized feeder inside the box. Like Jim Lyon and Michael Bush have both said, keep it simple and master the rest of queen rearing before getting too fussy about any one technique or detail.

Re: Stressful grafting and queen rearing attempt

Originally Posted by Oldtimer

Nice work Cristian it's good when it all comes together.

What are you going to do with these bees and what will you do with all the honey?

The honey from the production colonies(1 ) already given to nucs. I still have to make another round of queens in order to replace the old ones and probably make more nucs until late July, depending on how fast the existing buildup. The truth is that if I had some drawn combs at hand I could increase a lot more but I don't want to risk buying because of the diseases - safer without them.

I'm planning to start a queen rearing operation + sell overwintered nucs in early Spring. I want to give up my life as a computer programmer or at least reduce it to a minimum. Life at the office sucks. I like working in plain sun without a roof above me.